Chess programming is an old and venerable branch of game development. In the modern computing environment, it encompasses the development of chess engines, chess user interfaces (UIs), chess tournament broadcast tools, chess databases, endgame tablebases (EGTBs) and opening books. In this paper, the author shares his multi-year experience of…

Systematic endeavors to take computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT) to scale in middle and high school classrooms are underway with curricula that emphasize the enactment of authentic CT skills, especially in the context of programming in block-based programming environments. There is, therefore, a growing need to measure students'…

Studying worked examples has been found to be effective for learning problem solving, especially among students. However, students need to actively process example content to benefit from it and content must be structured in a manner that facilities knowledge construction. This study investigated the use of worked examples for teaching and…

Background and Context: Computer Science attrition rates (in the western world) are very concerning, with a large number of students failing to progress each year. It is well acknowledged that a significant factor of this attrition, is the students' difficulty to master the introductory programming module, often referred to as CS1. Objective: The…

Programming skills are an increasingly desirable asset across disciplines; however, learning to program continues to be difficult for many students. To improve pedagogy, we need to better understand the concepts that students find difficult and which have the biggest impact on their learning. Threshold-concept theory provides a potential lens on…

Recent years have seen a growing interest in block-based programming environments for computer science education. While these environments hold significant potential for novice programmers, they lack the adaptive support necessary to accommodate students exhibiting a wide range of initial capabilities and dispositions toward computing. A promising…

In programming courses there are various ways in which students attempt to cheat. The most commonly used method is copying source code from other students and making minimal changes in it, like renaming variable names. Several tools like Sherlock, JPlag and Moss have been devised to detect source code plagiarism. However, for larger student…

The first intelligent tutoring systems for computer programming have been proposed more than 30 years ago, mostly focusing on well defined programming tasks e.g. in the context of logic programming. Recent systems also teach complex programs, where explicit modelling of every possible program and mistake is no longer possible. Such systems are…

Programming is one of the most important aspects of a Computing course. Teaching programming is a challenging task due to a number of factors, ranging from lack of student problem solving skills to different teaching methods. This paper focuses on Maltese Computing teachers' perspectives about the difficulties encountered when teaching programming…

This study aimed at examining the COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) games having strong potential for helping to enhance intrinsic motivation and computational thinking skills. To this end, STEAM game store was searched with the keywords of "programming, coding, computing, and algorithm". This search yielded 1,249 games. After eliminating…

This study implemented a data-driven approach to identify Chinese high school students' common errors in a Java-based introductory programming course using the data in an automated assessment tool called the Mulberry. Students' error-related behaviors were also analyzed, and their relationships to success in introductory programming were…

Many course designers trying to evaluate the experience of participants in a MOOC will find it difficult to track and analyse the online actions and interactions of students because there may be thousands of learners enrolled in courses that sometimes last only a few weeks. This study explores the use of automated sentiment analysis in assessing…

This paper examines the limited proficiency to engage in programming algorithms among university students in information technology and information system in several universities across Surabaya, Indonesia. The purpose of this research is to find the most influential factor in learning programming algorithm using a quantitative approach. The…

Using unplugged coding activities to promote computational thinking (CT) among secondary learners has become increasingly popular. Benefits of using unplugged coding activities involve the cost-effective implementation, the ability to promote computer science concepts and self-efficacy in learning computer programming, and the engaging nature of…

Modern internet technologies have revolutionized traditional education by providing flexible and resourceful e-learning opportunities in all fields of life. Programming is an integral part of the undergraduate curriculum in computer sciences where an adequate level of programming expertise is expected from the graduates. In this paper, we explore…